Tuesday, September 6, 2016

TRIPLE LOVE SCORE by author, Brandi Megan Granett

What happens when you stop playing games?

Miranda
Shane lives a quiet life among books and letters as a professor in a small
upstate town. When the playing-by-the-rules poet throws out convention and
begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper to write, she sets off a chain
of events that rattles her carefully planned world.

Her
awakening propels her to take risks and seize chances she previously let slip
by, including a game-changing offer from the man she let slip away. But
when the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life
Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love or poetry.

"An entertaining romance novel with an engrossing
plot, a conflicted heroine, and a couple of surprising, poignant
takeaways."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Combustible
romance and fame slather a sexy gloss over more complex issues of familial love
and true accomplishment for Granett’'s cast of endearing characters.
An entertaining and perceptive story of our times.”

—
Kathryn Craft, award-winning author of The
Far End Of Happy and The Art Of
Falling

“Brandi Megan Granett’s
beautifully written debut novel, full of twists, turns and truths about the ups
and downs of life, had me spellbound from the very first page. Triple Love
Score proves that, in matters of the heart—as in Scrabble—when you get it
right, it’s nothing short of poetry.”

—Kristy Woodson Harvey, author of Dear Carolina and Lies and
Other Acts of Love

“A charming mash-up
of viral poetry, relatable characters, and slow-simmering romance. Granett
explores how doing the unexpected might lead to what you had always wanted.”

“Triple Love Score is a wonderful love story and a novel with
such intriguing twists and turns that it kept me turning those pages until the
very end! A fun, unique read.”

—Anne Girard, author of Platinum Doll

"Women seeking a solid story of a poetry
professor's awakening will find Triple Love Score a delightful romp
through options Miranda never realized she had."

—Midwest Review of Books

“Like tiles on a
Scrabble board, Granett's characters unfold and connect and diverge again.
Readers will be spellbound as they follow Poetry Professor Miranda Shane's
unlikely adventures - ones that take her across the country and as far away as
Istanbul and France - as her long-held dreams concerning love and career are
both challenged and re-defined.”

—Amy
Impellizzeri, author of Lemongrass Hope

“A romantic pleasure with delightfully unique
characters and a plot that takes you on an unexpected journey. Granett has a
clear writing style that brings each scene to life and makes for a tremendously
engaging read. As a fan of love and poetry, I highly recommend it!”

—Anita
Hughes, author of Santorini Sunsets

“A love story that is on one hand sweet, but on the
other full of surprises and intrigue, set against the background of
competitive…Scrabble? It sounds entirely unlikely but this is exactly what
Granett has spelled out in a slim novel that deserves kudos (using that ‘k’)
and could easily become a guilty pleasure.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author The Deep End of the Ocean

Some Q & A with Brandi:

1.Tell us a little bit
about yourself, and how you started writing.

I’ve
been writing since about the third grade; my elementary school published my
first story about sledding in the snow and hooked me to writing forever. Luckily,
I found great mentors at the University of Florida during my undergraduate time
there that continued to foster this love of words and story. In addition to being a writer, I am a mother,
wife, competitive archer, and writing professor.

2.What are some things
you enjoy when not writing?

The
number one thing I enjoy when not writing is archery. I started about nine
years ago when my daughter wanted to either be in a Renaissance faire or the
Olympics. Our local archery shop talked me into taking lessons with her, and I
was hooked. I traveled the Olympic recurve circuit for a number of years and
represented the USA in the 2010 World Field Archery Championships. Recently, an
injury gave me the opportunity to switch to compound archery, so I am enjoying
learning a whole new ballgame in my archery career.

My
family and I also enjoy eating; we love finding new restaurants, talking to
people about food, and exploring what cuisines are local to any place we travel
to. I recently experienced heaven in the form of a butter cake cannoli in St.
Louis. I am still thinking about it.

3.Do you have a ‘day
job’ as well?

Ah,
yes, the day job. I am lucky to have one that I love! I love teaching. It
lights me up to help other people reach their goals. And as a composition
instructor, I see a variety of students at the start of their educational
journeys. I love learning from my students as much as I love teaching them.

4.Where do you get your
ideas?

I’m big
into exploring what if. My first novel, My
Intended, was sparked by a news report about a woman marrying her fiancé
posthumously. My mind immediately went to the ramifications of this in her life,
and her relationships with the people in her life. For Triple Love Score, I
found myself wanting to write a book that was fun. I had recently fallen in
love again after leaving a long and kind of tough marriage. Writing about a
woman’s romantic and life choices as I rebuilt my own life gave me a great
outlet for exploring some of the what ifs and what matters that I faced in my
own circumstance.

5.Is there a particular
author or book that influenced or inspired your writing or decision to write?

I’ve
been inspired by a number of writers, but I have to say that Charles Baxter’s Feast of Love stands out to me as a
major influence. He found a way to use a literary style while talking about
love and romance.

6.Can you tell us about
your challenges in getting your first book published?

Triple Love Score is my second
published novel. I love everything about the process of working with Wyatt-Mackenzie
and how the internet expands an author’s reach into the world of readers. When
my first book was published, Harper Collins bought William Morrow, my
publisher, right before the book was launched. Everyone on my team lost their
job. And then I had a baby. In that process, I felt rather orphaned and my time
and focus turned to my daughter instead of my writing. Now, she is sixteen and
works as an intern helping me along on the journey to connect Triple
Love Score to readers. Nancy Cleary, my publisher, is also an amazing
and supportive person. And I have the Tall Poppy Writers, a collective of women
fiction authors that work to support each other and each other’s books. The
experiences between my first and second books are polar opposites of each
other.

7.How do you market
your work?

Part of
my marketing plan is giving back to other writers. I’ve been accomplishing this
goal with three separate prongs.

·First,
I belong to the Tall Poppy Writers. I have pledged to support 40 other women’s
fiction authors through thick and thin. We tweet and like and share each
other’s accomplishments and offer moral support on the sidelines.

·Second,
I interview authors for my blog on the Huffington
Post. I like to introduce readers to authors they might not have considered
in the past.

·Third,
I am building a community event called River Reads. So far, I have 25 local
authors signed up to read, sign, and promote their books at the historic
Prallsville Mill in Stockon, NJ on October 23 from 10am to 4pm.

8.What are you working
on now?

I am
working on a novel called Straight
Shooter. This book combines my love of archery with my desire to own a
campground. Through the novel, I get to explore the “what if” of following that
dream!

9.Is anything in your
book based on real life experiences?

The
romance part of my book most reflects my own life, but Miranda’s experiences as
the Blocked Poet and seducing a student are purely her own. I related with the
choices she faces between trusting someone from her past or making her way on
her own terms.

10.Do you have a favorite chapter or scene?

I think
my favorite line in the book is “Put out or get out.” It’s a little vulgar, a
little crass, but in that moment, Miranda is finally done taking a back seat to
what others want.

11.Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Keep
writing. Even a sentence a day. You can’t be a writer if you don’t do it.

Make
writer friends. I learned from archery that having other people around that are
trying to reach the same goals can push you to succeed. Every time I log in to
Facebook and see a picture of someone else’s target, I am reminded to go
practice. The same it true when I see that #amwriting. It makes me want it more
for myself.

12.What are the downfalls of your writing career? The best
parts?

The
downfalls are how tough the marketplace can be and keeping spirits up. Publishing
has changed so radically in my brief time, and it really takes some readjustment
and attitude adjustments to keep upbeat and in the game. The best parts: hands
down is seeing my daughter come into her own as a writer. She attended a slam
poetry camp this summer, and watching her perform her poem on stage rivaled any
feelings of pride I could get from seeing my own work on a shelf. That I get to
be a role model to her dreams is the icing on my cake.

13.Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers and
fans?

I’d like to say thank
you. Without readers, writing would be a lot less fun. I’d also love to hear
from readers on Facebook or Twitter. I’d love to know what they connected with
in Triple
Love Score and what they would like to see more of in the future.

About the Author

Brandi Megan Granett is an author, online English professor, and private writing mentor. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University, Wales, an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, a Masters in Adult Education with an emphasis on Distance Education from Penn State University, and her BA from the University of Florida.

Granett is the author of My Intended (William Morrow, 2000). Her short fiction has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Pleiades and other literary magazines, and is collected in the volume Cars and Other Things That Get Around.

When she is not writing or teaching or mothering, she is honing her archery skills. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter.